Everyone loves a good alien abduction movie, but Into the Sky, a comedy film that just premiered at Fantastic Fest, isn't like any you've ever seen. Its premise is brilliant: Sam Richardson's Bobby is doing everything he can to reconnect with his wife, but his efforts are constantly derailed by repeated alien targeting and abduction.
What also makes Into the Sky unique is that the movie never shows you the extraterrestrials in question. It's never in doubt that they exist, but even by the time the credits roll, audiences don't know what they look like.
The Direct spoke with Into the Sky directors Drew Mylrea and Evan Wolf Buxbaum at Fantastic Fest, where the two shared why they chose never to showcase the aliens, instead leaving it to the chaos and hilarity of Richardson's performance.
An Alien Abduction Movie Without the Aliens, but Plenty of Laughs
"It's Kind of More Powerful to Fill in the Blanks for Aliens, and We Didn't Have the Money"
- The Direct: "So this is an alien abduction movie, but with the twist that you never show us an alien. So talk about that choice."
Drew Mylrea: We loved the movie 'Signs' until we saw the alien, you know, at the end, and we thought, 'Wow, what a bummer,' you know, 'What a bummer!' And just in general, right, like, aliens are—you want to believe, you know what I mean? And what does it mean to believe? Like, no one knows what God looks like, right? And no one knows really what aliens look like, but we want to believe in them. So it's kind of more powerful to fill in the blanks for aliens, and we didn't have the money.
Evan Wolf Buxbaum: Someone in the screening we just did asked us whether it was a conscious effort [to not show the aliens] or whether we had budgetary issues, and the answer is yes.
Mylrea: A creature feature is awesome, and like when you do that, you have to go all in. You know what I mean? You have to design the creature and make it, [and] it has to be a huge part of the movie. And for us, there was just so many other things that we wanted to do. We didn't want to get consumed by the creature, if that makes sense.
- The Direct: "Starting from the get-go, when you sat down to make this film, what was the mission statement you had in mind?"
Buxbaum: When we sat down to make this film. We thought, we wanted to make something that is unabashedly fun. We just want to make a ripper, a movie that is unabashedly fun. And for us, that meant elements of the '90s, comedy, drama, heartfelt romance, all in this wild package with some magic and mystery that we think is, you know, that the world is full of, and we wanted to bring light to that. That's what we wanted to do.
- The Direct: "When you started approaching all the actors, what was the pitch?"
Mylrea: The pitch was similar to the logline, which is a guy trying to get back with his ex, but he keeps getting abducted by aliens. And then, if we went a little further, the pitch was, well, what would happen if you were abducted by aliens, right? Would you go out and tell everyone what's happening? At the risk of everyone saying, wait, no, this guy's a nut. Like, we gotta get away from this guy. So it was just kind of like that classic, like what would you do in that situation. And I always feel like that's just fertile ground. And then when that didn't work, we just asked people if they wanted to get really fucking dirty in upstate New York with us for a month, and they were like, we're in.
The Direct's entire interview for Into the Sky can be seen below:
